"Following on from the success of the first Cumbria Nuclear Conference in 2016, I am delighted to be hosting the conference again this year.

Cumbria has been home to the nuclear industry for sixty years. The conference is a celebration of the county’s nuclear industry and Cumbria’s role as a world leader in nuclear.

The Cumbria Nuclear Conference is an opportunity to promote that success. The event will bring together key stakeholders from the nuclear industry in order to facilitate greater cohesion and vision. The event will also provide an opportunity for voices in the nuclear supply chain to be heard.

It is vital that as a county, Cumbria capitalises on the opportunities available. I believe it has the will and the ability to do so."

Keynote Speakers

Douglas McCormick

Douglas is CEO of WYG plc, the global project management and technical consultancy. Previously, he was CEO of Sweett Group plc and prior to that Group Managing Director of Atkins Rail in the UK.

He has a background in construction and infrastructure and is a Non-Executive Director of the Institute for Collaborative Working and a Trustee of Let It Flow Engineering (LIFE), a charity funding water and sanitation projects in developing countries.

Douglas started his career as an apprentice and has served time as a Commissioner for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, worked as a Trust Administrator for Scottish-based homeless charity and undertaken a number of industry roles. His eclectic experience has contributed to his open and transparent leadership style, which is based on building successful teams through trust, empowerment and collaboration.

Douglas is a regular contributor in areas such as leadership, good work, apprenticeships, compliance and regulation, productivity and turnaround.

Henri Murison

Northern Powerhouse Partnership - Director

Henri was appointed last year as the first permanent Director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP), which has been established by business and civic leaders across the North to drive our economy and is chaired by George Osborne. During the last decade, he has held senior public policy roles in both the public and private sectors across the North of England. He served as Cabinet member for Quality of Life at Newcastle City Council, leading on key issues including transport, planning and the environment. He also worked as Research Director at the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire and, most recently, led on Public Affairs at the Yorkshire Building Society, focusing on issues such as devolution in Yorkshire, housing and transport.

Jo Lappin

Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership - Chief Executive

Jo Lappin is the Chief Executive of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, responsible for working in partnership to deliver economic growth, prosperity and improved productivity for businesses, people and communities in Cumbria. Since her arrival in April 2018, Jo has focused on ensuring that the LEP becomes one of the best performing LEPs in the country and is ahead of the pack in developing Cumbria’s Local industrial Strategy.

Previously, Jo was the Chief Executive of Northamptonshire LEP and was responsible for developing and delivering its Strategic Economic Plan, which was recognised by government as ‘one of the best’ nationally, with the LEP working in collaboration to deliver significant economic improvements around business growth, employment levels, job creation and attainment.

Prior to this Jo was a Senior Civil Servant in Government Office North West responsible for housing, planning, transport and the £850million European Programmes for the North West of England. In her civil service career Jo worked on all policy areas, majoring on economic growth, regeneration, skills and the ‘place’ agenda. Following her civil service career, she also spent two years in local government working on a national public service transformation pilot and on developing the arrangements to take forward the economic growth agenda across the sub-region.

Jo is qualified to post-graduate level and married with three adult children.

John Fyfe

International Management Specialist & Government Advisor

Professor Fyfe C.B.E has spent a lifetime working in the energy sectors and strategic economic development issues across the world. He has been committed to the people and challenges of Cumbria for over 30 years. John has always been an advocate of more comprehensive energy policies that properly take account of the ‘human’ or socio-economic aspects of the local community, and regional levels.

He has pioneered the concept of corporate social responsibility in the private sector. John has experience in the public and private sectors and strongly believes in the partnership concept in its various forms. He has been a full-time trade union official and Director of British Coal Enterprises, the UK Government Employment Adviser, advising Commonwealth Countries on economic development and in training or mentoring leaders.

John has also advised the UK government on energy policy issues and the restructuring of the nuclear industry.

Britain’s Energy Coast Business cluster and its 320 members, have recently appointed John as their patron in recognition of his contributions to Cumbria over 33 years. John says he is not quite finished yet and genuinely believes that the future for Cumbria is bright, provided partnerships and succession development continue to flourish.

Mike Thomas

Professor Thomas joined UCLan in the summer of 2014 having worked in the sector for nearly 30 years. He has an academic background in clinical mental health and organisational leadership.

Mike carries out research into the area of compassion and kindness in leadership and explores management and leadership with particular emphasis on stewardship, values and resilience.

He is a non-Executive Director of the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust. He also serves on a number of regional and national committees and groups, has led three social enterprise companies and acted as a mentor/coach to executive leadership in the public sector.

An ex-submariner Mike has worked on projects for many years which support military discharged service personnel to find new life and career opportunities. He works with a team of active ex-service academics and those with a special interest or specialism in the field of transition support and is the Co-Founder of the College for Veterans and Emergency Services. In 2014 he was awarded a Nationwide Award for Outstanding Contribution to Resettling Military Families.

Professor Thomas is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Society for the Arts and a Member of the British Psychological Society.

Paul Foster

Sellafield - Chief Executive Officer

Paul joined the company in 2000. He carried out roles across many of the business areas prior to his current position of Chief Executive Officer, overseeing operations, decommissioning and infrastructure. His roles included chief operating officer, decommissioning director and infrastructure director.

He is leading the company through a major transition that will see the end of reprocessing at Sellafield and an additional emphasis on remediation efforts and the management of waste at the site.

Prior to joining Sellafield, Paul spent most of his early career in the steel industry, joining British Steel at Workington in 1988, later moving to Scunthorpe.

Paul Howarth

National Nuclear Laboratory - Managing Director

Paul was appointed as Managing Director of the National Nuclear Laboratory on 1 January 2011. He has run large groups and extensive portfolios in both academic and business environments and engaged with senior stakeholders across Government, academia and industry. He has a strong knowledge of the research affairs of national and international nuclear organisations.

Paul began his career working on the European Fusion Programme where he completed his PhD, he subsequently worked in Japan on technology transfer in the semiconductor industry and also the Japanese nuclear programme. He worked for BNFL at numerous locations in the UK and roles covering technology commercialisation, plant support and policy development, culminating in support to the UK Government on the case for new nuclear build. Paul also co-founded the Dalton Nuclear Institute and worked for the US organisation Battelle alongside US National Laboratories on M&O contract development. In 2009 he was part of the M&O team that was awarded the contract to run NNL.

In addition to his NNL and CoNE roles, Paul is currently a Non-Executive Director at the National Physical Laboratory and Chair of the Association of Innovation, Research and Technology Organisations (AIRTO). He was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineers in 2014.

Richard Harrington MP

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Richard Harrington was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 14 June 2017. Responsibilities for this role include nuclear energy. He served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions from 17 July 2016 to 14 June 2017. He was elected as Conservative MP for Watford in May 2010.

His business career started with the John Lewis Partnership and he eventually ran a business, which at its peak had 2,000 employees in 7 countries.

Rick Wylie

UCLan - Samuel Lindow Academic Director

Dr. Wylie is UCLan’s Samuel Lindow Academic Director and Reader in Applied Policy Science. Working at Westlakes Campus and within the Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise (LSBE) he is Principal of the Samuel Lindow Foundation and Executive Director of UCLan’s Applied Policy Science Unit. From a 45-year career, he has a background in contract research and consultancy, the public sector, tourism and an academic background in applied policy research with public, private and social sectors.

Rick began his career in the early 1970’s selling cars in the pre-internet British Leyland days of mass walkouts and Morris Marinas – an era now gone with the wind… Following a number of years in local government and tourism, Rick entered the University of Newcastle upon Tyne as an undergraduate and subsequently went on to take an MPhil degree in government industry relations and a PhD in public opinion, values and risk, which he completed as a member of that University’s research staff.

He has worked at UCLan since 2010 where he formed the Applied Policy Science Unit, a network of advisors and advocates currently involved in applied research and dissemination in public value management working with a range of local, national and international collaborators. He is currently working on a series of books on public value management and leading the development of the ‘Satellite’ enterprise education initiative for LSBE at Westlakes, which includes the implementation of the new ESA_LAB@UCLan project in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

Dr. Wylie is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, the Tourism Society and The Institute of Travel and Tourism and a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.

Tom Greatrex

Nuclear Industry Association - Chief Executive

Tom Greatrex became Chief Executive of the NIA on 1 February 2016. Formerly MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Tom was shadow energy minister from 2011 – 2015 and the opposition’s lead spokesman on nuclear energy, electricity market reform, smart grid and metering, carbon capture and storage, interconnection and both onshore and offshore oil and gas. Leading the scrutiny of the Energy Act and the Infrastructure Act in the last Parliament, he secured a number of amendments to the proposed legislation. He also served as a member of the Energy Select Committee from 2010 and from 2007-2010 was a policy adviser in the Scotland Office, including on energy.

Since 2015, he has been an independent policy analyst working in the energy sector for a range of clients, a frequent media commentator on energy issues, and a regular columnist for Utility Week. In a varied prior career, he was Director of Corporate Affairs for the NHS in Scotland, a chief officer in local government and a GMB trade union official in England. Outside of work his main interests are family, football (Fulham) and film.

Tom Samson

NuGeneration - Chief Executive

Tom Samson joined NuGeneration Limited as CEO in June 2015 and leads the company’s project to build and operate Moorside Power Station in west Cumbria capable of supplying around seven per cent of the UK’s future electricity.

Tom joined NuGen from Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation where, as Chief Operations Officer, he helped develop a programme to deliver new nuclear units at Barakah, in Abu Dhabi. Tom completed his Bachelor of Engineering at Edinburgh’s Napier University in 1990 and began his career at GEC Alstom as a design engineer before joining Marubeni Corporation, where over the years he has worked on energy and infrastructure projects in the USA, Caribbean, UAE and Europe, gaining a reputation for creating shareholder value and delivering successful projects.

A renowned business leader within the energy industry with extensive global experience in developing successful organisational structures, corporate governance models and Joint Venture partnerships, Tom will drive NuGen forward to create a company capable of delivering the next generation of the UK's new nuclear reactors to provide safe, reliable, low carbon, affordable and secure electricity to the UK, with the planned development and implementation of one of the largest infrastructure projects in Europe.